


Play that silver ball

by JaqofSpades



Category: Lost Girl
Genre: 12 days of Ficmas 2014, F/M, not real shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 15:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3072884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They know Kenzi, the thief, and Kenzi the grifter.  But they don't know it all, the slams and the knocks and careening through life like a pinball on speed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play that silver ball

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BeaRyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaRyan/gifts).



> For BeaRyan/bea2me, who prompted "Kenzi being properly appreciated by pretty much anyone," and I'm always of the school that the person we most need to be properly appreciated by is ourselves :D

*

The battle roars in her ears, but Kenzi frowns and turns her head to catch the other sound. It's barely escaping the portal, soft and indistinct, but makes her take a step forward, then another. The whiz-click-SLAM of a flipper making contact. Her father, singing.

“Such a supple wrisssstttttt …”

Tears threaten, but Kenzi tosses her hair back and pushes her chin in the air. “Not with this smoky eye, sistah. And you know it's gotta be Fae trickery. That's all.”

But she likes their fae tricks, something inside of her wails. Being human might suck in the fae world, but being Kenzi was kinda cool. These guys, she thinks, looking over to where Dyson is ripping apart yet another revenant with his bare hands. (Claws? Bare claws doesn't sound right, and besides. Dyson's still pretty. And manly. Like – not wolfly.) Tamsin is slashing away with some sort of sword, and Trick is stabbing and slashing – but they all have an eye on her while they do it.

Dyson will try to stop her, she knows.

But he doesn't know who she is, not really. He knows Kenzi, the thief, and Kenzi the grifter. But he doesn't know it all, the slams and the knocks and careening through life like a pinball on speed. (Not a Kenzi on speed, though. She's not _stupid_.) 

Like her old man used to say. She's the pinball wizard.

“He ain't got no distractions, can't hear those buzzers'n'bells ...”

She could, though. She can hear them as clearly now as when Batya's favourite toy sat in the corner of the living room. He'd slam out a few games every night without fail, and by the time she was old enough to stand up by herself, he had her up on a crate, little hands pulling at the levers and smashing at the buttons, bellowing out the chorus of their song with every new high score. 

“Sure plays a mean pin ball!”

(The Who, of course. Not Elton John. Even at four, she wouldn't have lived in a house where people sang Elton John.)

Would he have wanted this for her, her Batya? She's not entirely sure how he was mixed up in the family business – mama moved them away after he died – but he and uncle Dimi were close, from what the cousins said. And Uncle Dimi kinda shot people for a living, so, hmm. Daddy mightn't have been good people.

But he loved her, and she remembers how the world felt from the top of his shoulders, that misty, golden sense of nothing-can-touch-me-here. (Hale had given her that too. She hadn't known what it felt like, until Hale had folded her in his arms the first time. And then she remembered. Batya.)

But Batya had died, and Mama had slammed that first ball into play when she invited the ogre into their lives, and Kenzi had needed every bit of her skill, deafdumbblind, from there on in. She'd never had the luxury of drifting through life – she hurtles, slamming from one disaster to the next.

Losing Daddy, BAM. The monster. BAM. Homeless, BAM, thief, BAM, grifter, BAM, Bo. BAM, BAM, BAM.

It's not that more shit happened to her after she hooked up with Bo. Okay, it is. Way more shit. But a lot of it was good shit. _Great_ shit. But having friends and family and a place to live … it hurt more, when the hits came.

Not being fae.

Having to give up Nate.

Teetering on the edge of something with Hale. 

Knowing she'd never measure up.

Falling in love anyway.

Losing him.

(Bodyblows, BAM, BAM, BAM, doubling her over and crippling her, her own horror ringing in her ears as she watches his blood stain her clothes, screaming at him, screaming the words he'd never hear.)

She's hollow, after that, hollow and hateful and angry. Bo hasn't been there, she tells herself, Bo is nothing but a great big hole in her memories, so she could turn away. Run. Start over.

But she doesn't. She can't. Despite everything – BAM, BAM, BAM – she loves them all too much.

She loves _her_ too much.

Because she's the pinball wizard again, not that kid being flicked from place to place, taking the hits with a smile, faking the grins and the chutzpah and the badass. She's so much more now – she's Dyson's friend, TamTam's almost mommy, Trick's adopted granddaughter. Bo's heart.

Something inside of her had shivered the first time she'd heard the words read, felt the imminence of the prophecy. _The daughter's heart._

Her. Mackenzie Malikov, scared little street rat thief grifter Kenzi. She was the one who kept Bo feeling, kept Bo human, more us than them. Bobo might be High Queen of the freaking Fae, but she was still the woman who bled for everyone with a sob story, who refused to commit to one side or the other because she didn't see why there had to be sides. Who shook like a little girl when her foster mother frowned at her, and cried like a baby when she'd had a fight with her girlfriend.

She might not have a drop of human blood, but she lives and loves and fights like one of them, and no matter what they try to do to make her more fae, she just goes on being Bo. Kenzi knows that's something to do with her.

Because she's seen it with the others too.

Hale, trading away the greatest asset to his family name. Dyson, pulling her close and sharing her sorrow after the death of the man they both loved. Trick, the Blood King himself, letting her wriggle her way into the fae history books, because she belongs there. Belongs with them.

She's Kenzi. Weak, human, crazy, badass Kenzi. Their heart.

Bo will come for her. And until then, Kenzi can take whatever they want to dish. Batya didn't call her the pinball wizard for nothing – she's got this.

So she reassures Dyson, tries to explain and hugs him hard, and maybe there's a tear because she sucks at goodbyes but that's all it is, because she's doing this. The light is calling her, warm and welcoming and the tinny strains of the song telling her it's time to go.

Time to play the silver ball.

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a transformative work (fan fiction) as protected under the fair use provisions of international copyright law. I am not profiting from this work, nor do I make any claims to, or intend any infringement on, the intellectual properties held by the rights owner.


End file.
